The Window to the Soul

Your eyeballs are weird. Granted mine are, too.

What, you don't believe me? Go look in the mirror and look at one of your eyes and consider it as separate from the rest of your face. Just like any part of the human body considered on its own, the eye is a strange convention.

Yet we attach ultimate significance to a pair of eyes in creating a human being. What part of a person's face do you look into when you speak to him or her? Eyes are apparently both a very public and a very personal thing. When you want to confront somone and let people know you are engaged in serious communication with them, you look into the eyes. And yet, it is considered normal human etiquette to not look into someone's eyes for more than a few seconds at a time. (Look into someone's eyes too long and you'll either really freak them out or give them the idea you are in love with them.) As a matter of fact, some individuals have trouble maintaining eye contact when speaking to other people because they find it such an intense and somehow intimidating experience. Through maintaining eye contact, people every day communicate more intimately than they care to think.

There are more song lyrics and poetry having to do with the eyes than any other part of the human face or body. The iris of the eye is composed of hundreds of thousands of nerve endings connected by impulses to every body tissue through the brain and nervous system. The eye is known as "the window to the soul." People can usually fairly accurately judge human emotions and attitudes by appraising another's eyes. Matthew 6:22-23 says, "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" Song of Solomon refers to one glance from a lover "ravishing [the] heart." (Solomon 4:9).

When we maintain eye contact with people, are we looking for something we haven't found within the realm of the tangible and the temporal? The human body, in all its marvelous heavenly construction, does not reveal heart and soul. Can I really see a person's soul in his or her eyes? Am I looking for God? For those who are agnostic, am I looking for something metaphysical, for a hint and a glance of an existence that is more than human emotions explained away by hormone levels?

If I gazed into the eyes of Jesus what would I see? I think what I would see would kill me. The luminosity, the burning, the intensity, the mosaic of existence summed up in one glance. The unquenchable anger, the relentless love, the all-knowing gaze. The story of eternity, boundless in all directions. I believe I would see myself. I'd see the whole human race, the heavenly hosts, the hordes of hell, the highest mountains, the deepest valleys, the cross and the empty tomb. Everything that ever existed coming at me. He Who is Existence Itself ripping me to shreds, looking at me, yet looking straight through me, beholding only I, yet beholding all. Loving only me, yet loving all humanity in one instant. One instant, one interminable split-second, which never had a beginning and is too real and true to ever end. " For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth" (II Chronicles 6:9).

Eyes are amazing because you don't just see the soul of the other person. You can even see yourself.

If you ever find yourself in love, or rather, love finds you, remember this one thing. As you gaze into those irises, keep your eyes wide open. The longer and harder you gaze, the more you see. The more you see the more you love. The more you love, the more you see. Look closely and you will see your own reflection. (I speak from experience,) the more you see, the more you love, .....the more you see yourself being loved. A union of souls.